Sunday, September 28, 2008
Clothes, clothes and more clothes
Now, for anyone who knows me you know I hate clothes shopping. So heading to a town which is known for being home to over 500 tailors I wasn't expecting to go crazy with excitement. However, with so many tailors you have to try it out and Mum and Dad's upcoming party for which we are heading all the way home seemed the perfect excuse. Not managing to find a style I liked in any of the hundreds of catalogues that were presented I ended up describing what I wanted and picking out a couple of fabrics. The next day I had a brand new one of a kind dress that fits perfectly for less than $30. Jason on the other hand had a nice dress shirt in his own choice of fabric, despite repeatedly being redirected to the shirt fabrics (all business shirt type fabrics) he stuck to his guns choosing from the dress fabrics. After a week here not only have we succumbed to buying 2 pairs of jeans, a dress, a skirt, and a shirt.... but we are also compiling the long list of clothes we will get made before coming home at the end of this trip. That's right, we will be back and we will be shopping!! We're up to 31 items so far, but that could get longer as we've still got at least a year before we'll be back.
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Zipping through villages and going underground
Well, we finally felt we had mastered the crossing the street problem. It involves walking very very slowly and constantly. We generally try to pick a time with no cars, trucks, buses but trying to wait for a time with no motorbikes would mean never actually crossing the road. So when you're ready you step out and start walking and miraculously all the motorbikes predict where you will be and swerve to pass either in front or behind. Always a heart pounding experience, but as I said we felt we had it mastered. So, we decided to hire a motorbike for the day! Luckily Jason is actually capable of driving such things as my attempts (once we were in the countryside) were, to be honest, embarrassing. We negotiated the traffic of Hue, thankfully not as busy as Hanoi, and set off to explore the royal tombs which are dotted around the countryside.
The tombs were interesting certainly, although the architecture was very similar to other historic places we have been, the area was beautifully landscaped and serene. The real fun was riding a motorbike, particularly when we got lost! The guidebook mentioned that there was a dirt track between two of the tombs, what they didn't mention is that there are two dirt tracks one goes somewhere completely different. So, we rode through a couple of little villages, beside rice paddies and chose directions at random. Much more fun than the tour option!
The next day we headed up to the former DMZ (de-militarised zone) primarily to explore the Vinh Moc tunnels. These tunnels were dug by civilians who decided to stay in the area. The tunnel system has three levels 12m, 15m and 23m. There are a number of bomb shelters in the tunnel at 23m (to avoid drilling bombs that reach 15m underground). Although not lived in permanently (people would come and go depending on how much bombing was going on - 5 days and nights was the maximum) these tunnels were occupied for a 6 year period. The family rooms that housed 2 adults and 2 children were about three quarters of the size of a normal single bed, the maternity ward about the size of a single bed.
Another highlight of the DMZ was the museum with a very different slant on the war than we normally receive. The photos of American troops invariably had captions along the lines of "American troops turning tail and running from the might of the liberation army". Whilst the photos of the north Vietnamese army showed smiling happy people carrying supplies.
The tombs were interesting certainly, although the architecture was very similar to other historic places we have been, the area was beautifully landscaped and serene. The real fun was riding a motorbike, particularly when we got lost! The guidebook mentioned that there was a dirt track between two of the tombs, what they didn't mention is that there are two dirt tracks one goes somewhere completely different. So, we rode through a couple of little villages, beside rice paddies and chose directions at random. Much more fun than the tour option!
The next day we headed up to the former DMZ (de-militarised zone) primarily to explore the Vinh Moc tunnels. These tunnels were dug by civilians who decided to stay in the area. The tunnel system has three levels 12m, 15m and 23m. There are a number of bomb shelters in the tunnel at 23m (to avoid drilling bombs that reach 15m underground). Although not lived in permanently (people would come and go depending on how much bombing was going on - 5 days and nights was the maximum) these tunnels were occupied for a 6 year period. The family rooms that housed 2 adults and 2 children were about three quarters of the size of a normal single bed, the maternity ward about the size of a single bed.
Another highlight of the DMZ was the museum with a very different slant on the war than we normally receive. The photos of American troops invariably had captions along the lines of "American troops turning tail and running from the might of the liberation army". Whilst the photos of the north Vietnamese army showed smiling happy people carrying supplies.
How to get through a police barrier.
Arriving in Hanoi was a pleasant experience, the touts for transport weren't pushy and we were directed to where we wished to go (a nice change!) without attempts to change our minds, the only mishap was my misplacing of the passport holders with the yellow fever certificates but as we still had the passports it wasn't urgent and we hoped that they were just deep in the day pack.
Traveling the 40km to the city it self, allowed you to start to appreciate some of the differences of Vietnam, the high quality highway which we traveled along had signs indicating cars and motorcycles were to share the main part while horse drawn carts and bicycles used the side lane. The closer we got to Hanoi the more frenetic the traffic became until it reached a point exceeding the worse in Cambodia, still we were assured that it was much better than in Ho Chi Minh (Saigon), oh what we have to look forward to. The traffic had 8-12 bikes running level when no cars were sharing, and would manage to cross at cross roads with none of the lanes appearing to even slow. Looking out at the movement from a restaurant window you became hypnotised watching every more crazy happenings none of which seemed to cause an accident (occasionally all traffic at the junction would pause for one or two seconds as they worked out who needed to move first) My personal favorite was a person wheeling a large sign (about 4 car lengths long) across the diagonal of the road with balloon vendors with their carts and the rest of the normal traffic not missing a beat.
The First Full day we organised to see the water puppets in the evening, only one screening that day. But not much else was done as I made a trip out to the airport to collect those yellow fever certificates from lost and found, an experience just seeing how much stuff sits and waits for collection/identification. The Water Puppets were worth seeing, unfortunately from our position taking photos was pointless and my knees were as squished as on an Ethiopian bus, but the show was very interesting with 14 or so very short little skits performed to traditional music. While basic, controlling the movements of the puppets definitely required a lot of skill. Features of the puppets included fire breathing and water spitting dragons, Acrobatic children that stood on each others shoulders and many more.
We had booked a two day trip into Ha Long Bay where we soon discovered that the voting for the "7 Natural Wonders of the World" was currently taking place, Ha Long bay was in the 21 finalists for a position and every one of the people involved in the trip found a moment to encourage us to vote. The bay was very Stunning with small islands all over (approximately 1969 islands in total we were informed) many of which had been given names by the locals such as cocks fighting, turtle sleeping, the whole bay according to legend formed by dragons who assisted the Vietnamese in a war and decided to hang around rather than return to heaven. We had a wonderful time on the boat with very nice food, the best traditional food to that point.
But it wasn't just sailing, the boat went to "The Cave of Marvels" which is a very spacious series of chambers which are stunning lit up (rather tacky really but still pretty), many of the formations had been named some appropriately, it was a bit hard to argue with "penis rock" or some of the lovers, though most in the group thought that the "dog" was rather more like a pig and a conclusion that some people have very active imaginations. Returning to the boat we headed off to our mooring for the night, once there we started our afternoon activity of leaping from the second story of the boat into the water. This really was a great way of spending the afternoon on board, unfortunately the jellyfish put a slight damper to that activity.
It really was a very nice way of spending a couple of days everything ran smoothly, we will just ignore the sleepless night due to the rats :(, and would like to see what the bay looks like with clear days so you can see many more of the islands at once. Our final activity on the bay was a kayaking trip through a nearby arch into a isolated lake inside an island, quite nice but more arm work than I think either of us wanted.
After a day of recovering we decided to at least look at one of the temples in Hanoi, looking in the guide we decided upon the temple of literature. This temple was built by early rulers partially as a university and a place to study Confucianism, it had a number of ponds (representing elements) together with the traditional buildings containing Steele (stone tablets) which contained details of all the students who graduated from the temple. The item that caught our eye first though was the ceremonial drum which can be seen from outside, this drum would be at least 3m in diameter and 5m in length. The temple was a very nice place to escape the rush of Hanoi, and even to take some wedding photos as we observed.
Having booked our tickets to Hue after visiting the temple, our last day was to consist of relaxing in the hotel and visiting one or more of the museums. The morning however started with me deciding to do a kind deed and collecting some chocolate croissants for breakfast in bed. Departing the hotel it looked like a parade was being orgainsed with so many people in uniform around, my return was rather more interesting as in the intervening 10 minutes barricades were erected either end of the street where our hotel was located and people were not being allowed back in to the area with out ID or proof of need. Having just left to get breakfast I had no guidebook, couldn't remember the name of the hotel, had no mobile to call with and was being obstructed by police telling me to go round (both sides told me this repeatedly.) Eventually I narrowed the requirements to getting through this barrier to having a business card of the hotel, calling them and getting them to accompany me through the barrier, or convince them of which hotel I was staying in. As the last seemed the only option, I grabbed the first tourist I saw with a lonely planet and got the address and phone number for the hotel and decided to make another attempt before finding a phone to call from. This did in fact work with only a little extra persuasion. It was a slightly eerie experience being inside a police blockade where the normal hustle and bustle of Vietnamese streets had dropped to a whisper (well if you ignore the few hundred protestors 3 doors down anyway). We found out that the blockade was due to protests by the catholic priests regarding land in the street, it even made the world news a few days later. ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7632095.stm )
But it wasn't just sailing, the boat went to "The Cave of Marvels" which is a very spacious series of chambers which are stunning lit up (rather tacky really but still pretty), many of the formations had been named some appropriately, it was a bit hard to argue with "penis rock" or some of the lovers, though most in the group thought that the "dog" was rather more like a pig and a conclusion that some people have very active imaginations. Returning to the boat we headed off to our mooring for the night, once there we started our afternoon activity of leaping from the second story of the boat into the water. This really was a great way of spending the afternoon on board, unfortunately the jellyfish put a slight damper to that activity.
It really was a very nice way of spending a couple of days everything ran smoothly, we will just ignore the sleepless night due to the rats :(, and would like to see what the bay looks like with clear days so you can see many more of the islands at once. Our final activity on the bay was a kayaking trip through a nearby arch into a isolated lake inside an island, quite nice but more arm work than I think either of us wanted.
After a day of recovering we decided to at least look at one of the temples in Hanoi, looking in the guide we decided upon the temple of literature. This temple was built by early rulers partially as a university and a place to study Confucianism, it had a number of ponds (representing elements) together with the traditional buildings containing Steele (stone tablets) which contained details of all the students who graduated from the temple. The item that caught our eye first though was the ceremonial drum which can be seen from outside, this drum would be at least 3m in diameter and 5m in length. The temple was a very nice place to escape the rush of Hanoi, and even to take some wedding photos as we observed.
Having booked our tickets to Hue after visiting the temple, our last day was to consist of relaxing in the hotel and visiting one or more of the museums. The morning however started with me deciding to do a kind deed and collecting some chocolate croissants for breakfast in bed. Departing the hotel it looked like a parade was being orgainsed with so many people in uniform around, my return was rather more interesting as in the intervening 10 minutes barricades were erected either end of the street where our hotel was located and people were not being allowed back in to the area with out ID or proof of need. Having just left to get breakfast I had no guidebook, couldn't remember the name of the hotel, had no mobile to call with and was being obstructed by police telling me to go round (both sides told me this repeatedly.) Eventually I narrowed the requirements to getting through this barrier to having a business card of the hotel, calling them and getting them to accompany me through the barrier, or convince them of which hotel I was staying in. As the last seemed the only option, I grabbed the first tourist I saw with a lonely planet and got the address and phone number for the hotel and decided to make another attempt before finding a phone to call from. This did in fact work with only a little extra persuasion. It was a slightly eerie experience being inside a police blockade where the normal hustle and bustle of Vietnamese streets had dropped to a whisper (well if you ignore the few hundred protestors 3 doors down anyway). We found out that the blockade was due to protests by the catholic priests regarding land in the street, it even made the world news a few days later. ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7632095.stm )
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Just a little Island time
Before we had even spent a night in Chau Doc, we ran into some people we had met in the visa office back in Phnom Penh, they had managed to take a slightly different slow boat to Chau Doc and told us about their plans to get to Phu Quoc. Using someone elses motivation to find the cheapest price seemed advantagous to us, so we followed him on a tour of the ticket sellers of the town settling on a combination minibus/ferry ticket (with transport between at own cost) for the next day.
Getting up bright an early, to get on our little minibus, we decided that the few dollars saved were due to the fact our minibus was definately not express and even backtracked at one point to ensure that it was always full to 120% capacity. Fortunately Ellen and I had ended up it the danger seat- the seat beside the driver which meant we didn't have to endure the tidal flow of extra passengers squeezing on and off, as the driver refused to let go of the horn it was noisy but relatively safe.
Arrival at the bus terminal we endured the rush of motos trying to obtain our patrinage putting them off till after we had eaten. Facing them once again we negotiated as best we could before climbing onto a bike each, at least Vietnam is one of the countries with compulsory helmets. Traveling to the Dock via the ticket office, we recieved our boarding pass for the ferry- always a releif when things happen the way you are told we made it through the hours of waiting for departure, and the crazy martial art gambling movies that played during the trip. With only the final stint to long beach and the resorts we agreed to take a minibus that promised if we didn't like their resort they would take us to the other resorts we wanted free of charge... we should have known better. We ended up staying one night there due to exaustion, the rain now falling and the fact it was the cheapest resort in the strip, but the following morning we moved on principle as we don't like being mislead!
Moving to the some what more extravigant Tropicana Resort ($20 rather than $10) we gained A/C a much nicer bungalo looking onto the gardens and best of all a swiming pool. As the beach wasn't the most beautiful beach we had ever seen and the weather was churning up the water so much we ended up spending a lot of time in the pool and enjoying the beach for the sound and view. Three days here was great for just managing to relax and get ready to explore Vietnam which was expected to be a bit more challenging than Cambodia.
Deciding that the last time we debated between saving not all that much money and taking a 2 day journey turned out not so well, after quite some debate we elected to be sensible an splurge on an air ticket to Hanoi (Really not that much more that the ferry/train coast anyway). So with a free transfer that actually was free we left early in the morning for the airport to see the sights of the capital.
Getting up bright an early, to get on our little minibus, we decided that the few dollars saved were due to the fact our minibus was definately not express and even backtracked at one point to ensure that it was always full to 120% capacity. Fortunately Ellen and I had ended up it the danger seat- the seat beside the driver which meant we didn't have to endure the tidal flow of extra passengers squeezing on and off, as the driver refused to let go of the horn it was noisy but relatively safe.
Arrival at the bus terminal we endured the rush of motos trying to obtain our patrinage putting them off till after we had eaten. Facing them once again we negotiated as best we could before climbing onto a bike each, at least Vietnam is one of the countries with compulsory helmets. Traveling to the Dock via the ticket office, we recieved our boarding pass for the ferry- always a releif when things happen the way you are told we made it through the hours of waiting for departure, and the crazy martial art gambling movies that played during the trip. With only the final stint to long beach and the resorts we agreed to take a minibus that promised if we didn't like their resort they would take us to the other resorts we wanted free of charge... we should have known better. We ended up staying one night there due to exaustion, the rain now falling and the fact it was the cheapest resort in the strip, but the following morning we moved on principle as we don't like being mislead!
Moving to the some what more extravigant Tropicana Resort ($20 rather than $10) we gained A/C a much nicer bungalo looking onto the gardens and best of all a swiming pool. As the beach wasn't the most beautiful beach we had ever seen and the weather was churning up the water so much we ended up spending a lot of time in the pool and enjoying the beach for the sound and view. Three days here was great for just managing to relax and get ready to explore Vietnam which was expected to be a bit more challenging than Cambodia.
Deciding that the last time we debated between saving not all that much money and taking a 2 day journey turned out not so well, after quite some debate we elected to be sensible an splurge on an air ticket to Hanoi (Really not that much more that the ferry/train coast anyway). So with a free transfer that actually was free we left early in the morning for the airport to see the sights of the capital.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Boating through the Mekong Delta
After eating our fill of Khmer curries it was time to head to Vietnam. This involved a bus to Phnom Penh (we took the boat up to Siem Reap, so thought we'd try the road) a day there getting our visa, again as we hadn't spent anytime dealing with bureaucracy we went for the personal approach, and went in person (every hotel and every second shop advertises they will do it for you for little extra cost) and discovered that when they said come back and collect the passports at 5pm we thought that they would be ready by two and turning up at 4:15 would be fine (the office hours were listed as closing at 4:30 so we wanted to make sure we got in) but no when they say 5 it means they will start putting the visa stickers in the passports at 5.
Visa in hand the first visas that we had before turning up at a border we chose to go on the "Slow" boat thinking more opportunity for taking photos! as well as being a quarter of the price but after a two hour minibus trip to the ferry we realised there was more to it than the speed of the boat. After a cruise in the rustic boat (all the luggage and 7 of the 9 people on board where on the port side to keep the boat more level.) We arrived at the boarder post where we all had to get out of the boat to sign out of Cambodia, then back to the boat for a 500m trip to the Vietnam post. We then discovered our boat didn't continue with us and we were introduced to our guide for the remainder of our trip, she explained what each of the stages we had to go through to complete the formalities including the 4000 dong health check which only seemed to involve paying money? but there where very clear official signs indicating that this was a requirement (with differencing amounts if you hadn't been vaccinated against various illnesses- though this wasn't checked).
Boarding a slightly less battered boat we continued our journey to Chau Doc receiving a bit of information from our guide as to what we were seeing. We were slightly shocked to see that the stereotypical images of the farmers with their buffalo in rice paddies with conical hats really appeared to be true. Settling into our hotel we prepared to work out how to find our way to the Island of Phu Quoc but more of that next time.
Visa in hand the first visas that we had before turning up at a border we chose to go on the "Slow" boat thinking more opportunity for taking photos! as well as being a quarter of the price but after a two hour minibus trip to the ferry we realised there was more to it than the speed of the boat. After a cruise in the rustic boat (all the luggage and 7 of the 9 people on board where on the port side to keep the boat more level.) We arrived at the boarder post where we all had to get out of the boat to sign out of Cambodia, then back to the boat for a 500m trip to the Vietnam post. We then discovered our boat didn't continue with us and we were introduced to our guide for the remainder of our trip, she explained what each of the stages we had to go through to complete the formalities including the 4000 dong health check which only seemed to involve paying money? but there where very clear official signs indicating that this was a requirement (with differencing amounts if you hadn't been vaccinated against various illnesses- though this wasn't checked).
Boarding a slightly less battered boat we continued our journey to Chau Doc receiving a bit of information from our guide as to what we were seeing. We were slightly shocked to see that the stereotypical images of the farmers with their buffalo in rice paddies with conical hats really appeared to be true. Settling into our hotel we prepared to work out how to find our way to the Island of Phu Quoc but more of that next time.
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Cooking up a storm
One of the biggest surprises for us in Cambodia was the food, just delicious! To be honest, before I arrived I had no idea what Cambodian food was being more familiar with neighbouring Thailand and Vietnam. For 10 days I virtually lived on Khmer curry, so good! In fact it was so good that we decided to do a cooking class. Unfortunately the herbs used were generally unknown and unrecognisable... so I don't know how we'll go replicating it back home, but we'll try!
Our cooking class started with a trip to the market to buy some last minute ingrediants before we whipped up a Khmer curry, fresh spring rolls, mango salad, and Amok. I would like to say that we were the stars of the class, but we got admonished for not chopping fine enough, making our carrots pretty enough and not rolling our spring rolls tight enough. The food still tasted good though!
Our cooking class started with a trip to the market to buy some last minute ingrediants before we whipped up a Khmer curry, fresh spring rolls, mango salad, and Amok. I would like to say that we were the stars of the class, but we got admonished for not chopping fine enough, making our carrots pretty enough and not rolling our spring rolls tight enough. The food still tasted good though!
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Marvelling at ancient temples
It is all too easy to wax lyrical about the temples of Angkor, where we spent three days exploring temples devoured by jungle, examining carvings of dancers and gods and admiring statues of Buddha.
The most famous temple, for it's sheer size, is Angkor Wat. This wasn't however the first temple we visited, or by any means our favourite. We started off in Bayon which is within a larger complex Angkor Thom. This was amazing there were two levels that were accessible and within these you could wander around, over and through. Every surface seemed to be carved and we felt much more like we were exploring the site than we had expected. Some temples were under restoration and lots have scaffolding holding them up, but others like Bayon are in amazing condition. One, Ta Prohm (made famous by Lara Croft), has not been restored allowing you to see the state they were found in. Enormous trees have caught root in the temples forcing the stones apart. There are many areas of Ta Prohm that were in serious danger of falling down and wooden walkways take you around these, but once you are inside you are able to climb over crumbling pillars, squeeze through doorways and appear in a surprisingly intact room with carvings hundreds of years old (and usually no other tourists).
The most famous temple, for it's sheer size, is Angkor Wat. This wasn't however the first temple we visited, or by any means our favourite. We started off in Bayon which is within a larger complex Angkor Thom. This was amazing there were two levels that were accessible and within these you could wander around, over and through. Every surface seemed to be carved and we felt much more like we were exploring the site than we had expected. Some temples were under restoration and lots have scaffolding holding them up, but others like Bayon are in amazing condition. One, Ta Prohm (made famous by Lara Croft), has not been restored allowing you to see the state they were found in. Enormous trees have caught root in the temples forcing the stones apart. There are many areas of Ta Prohm that were in serious danger of falling down and wooden walkways take you around these, but once you are inside you are able to climb over crumbling pillars, squeeze through doorways and appear in a surprisingly intact room with carvings hundreds of years old (and usually no other tourists).
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